Thursday, 19 November 2015

Hello again! Sorry this one's a bit late again, I wanted to be able to write a decent amount for once! I continue to have a lovely time here in Oviedo; the weather has been simply gorgeous, my lessons have been easy to teach, and I was helped along by a mid-week parcel from home as well!I had a four-day weekend again last week, as the teacher I work with on Mondays was unable to come into school, and said I needn't bother coming in either! I took advantage of the extra time, and did my first proper food-shop at Carrefour, which is like a monster Asda selling everything under the sun. (Everything....except mincemeat. But I'll come to that later.) I also spent my Sunday afternoon with my friend for our regular maccy's meetup in town, which was lovely as always!If anything, one thing which was a bit more of a challenge this week was working out what I was going to do in my classes, since there aren't really any other celebrations in England until Christmas now. However, my teacher friend who drives me to and from school most days, has spent a lot of time in the USA, and so suggested I do Thanksgiving! Now, aside from the wonderful Thanksgiving episodes of 'Friends', I can't say I know a lot about Thanksgiving, but the story turned out to be very straight-forward, and I learned a lot as well! And, with my bilingual classes, I even got to watch a few clips from 'Friends' to ahem..."practise their listening skills." They all found it very funny when Joey gets the turkey stuck on his head, so I'd say it went well!!Going back to Carrefour: I wanted to let the teachers at school and maybe some of the students, try some typically English or Cumbrian food or sweets, since I'm spending my year eating dinner at 3pm and tea at 10pm (still weird). However, as hard as I tried, I could not find any ingredients to make the things I wanted to! I had originally planned to make my own Cinder Toffee in time for Bonfire Night, but nowhere had Bicarbonate of Soda, and golden syrup was nowhere to be seen! So I enlisted my parents, and they sent me 3 huge bags of cinder toffee, and 6 bars of Kendal Mint Cake- brilliant!! Unfortunately, Kendal Mint Cake doesn't stretch far enough for all my students to try a piece, but I did manage to give a bit to the majority of the teachers, to which they all replied "Ooh, minty!?" but I think it was a hit :D Luckily, there was enough cinder toffee to sink a ship, so all of my students (well, the well-behaved ones that is) got a small piece each, and several rushed up to me at the end of the lesson to ask me "What is it? Can I buy it in Spain? How do I make it!?" so I apologise in advance to many sets of Spanish parents whose kitchens may be filled with overflowing pans of toffee this week!!One thing that I am still struggling to cope with however, is mince pies (I told you I'd come to it!) since it is almost impossible to find currants or sultanas here, let alone mixed peel or a lonely jar of mincemeat, and I'm blowed if I'm going to spend £20 on postage to get a jar of Waitrose's Own Mincemeat from Amazon!! I really really really want to make some so that my flatmates and teachers at school can maybe try some since the sweets were such a success, so I think this weekend I'll be exploring some more supermarkets in a vain attempt to find some. Fingers crossed.Steering myself away from food now, I can't believe it's only a month until I come home for Christmas! 4 piddly little weeks and I'll be en route to Stansted airport. Hoooww have I been in Spain for this long already? It seems to have flown by, and I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing- part of me wants to live in Oviedo, and part of me wants this year to be over and done with so I can carry on with life back home! I've been so happy here so far, and my Spanish has improved dramatically, but, despite not being homesick, there are definitely a million things I miss about home. Especially at Christmas!That's all for this week! Sorry there hasn't been any photos this time, when you go to the same places all the time you sort of run out of things to take pictures of haha. Speak soon! xxxPS- Helen, I started writing this as soon as you told me during mine and Alex's phone call!!